


Billy Forgets

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: After Trevor's murder, Gen, Sherlock and Mycroft after Eurus has been taken away, What does Sherlock remember?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 23:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is little, and eerie. Sherlock (Billy) has forgotten what he cannot bear to remember...but those memories are not gone, and they cry out to be recovered.





	Billy Forgets

“You’re too fat,” Billy—who would later be called Sherlock—told his brother.

His brother scowled, and threw a rock out into the meadow behind the house.

Billy smiled to himself. Mycroft didn’t like being told he was too fat, but he was too committed to logic and reason to deny it. Billy found that conflict both useful and satisfying. Mycroft might be smarter, but smarter wasn’t always all that great. Better to be dumber and clever enough to use Mycroft’s logic against him.

The day was hot. Mycroft, dressed in boy’s shorts, sandals, a shirt, and the inevitable too-warm wool pull-over sweater embroidered with his school’s monogram, was pink as a piglet, with a sheen of sweat over his freckled face.

“Let’s go hiking,” Billy said, and congratulated himself when Mycroft shook his head.

Mycroft studied him, though, eyes narrowing. Billy looked back up, wide-eyed and innocent, the exact look he gave Mummy when he told her Mycroft stole the caramels hidden up on the shelf in the pantry, or that Mycroft had knocked over and broken the vase on the window sill, or that Mycroft had made the stinky, horrible mess in the bathroom by mixing up all the bottles in the house. Mummy believed you when your eyes went wide, even when it wasn’t logical.

Mycroft did not. His mouth tightened. “Let’s go down to the stream behind the house and play pirates,” he said instead.

Billy grimaced, unsure why that idea was so disturbing. “I don’t like pirates,” he said. Sullenly.

“You used to.”

“I never.” Billy glanced around, and added. “I don’t like the stream.”

He didn’t like water, he thought. It wasn’t fun. Water was…

Boring. That was it. Water was boring.

Mycroft considered him, eyes now unreadable.

Mycroft had stopped being fun when they moved to the new house.

Billy frowned to himself. Had Mycroft ever been fun?

He didn’t like asking himself that sort of question. There were entire directions of thought that made him feel a bit dizzy and twitchy, and “before they moved to the new house” was one of the directions, as was “Mycroft before.”

Before what? Before they moved? No. That was wrong somehow.

He heard a dog, barking and barking and barking.

Redbeard, he thought, almost casually, and felt the fear race up his spine.

“What happened to Redbeard?” he asked, not sure he wanted an answer.

“Redbeard?” Mycroft’s head jerked and he looked down at his little brother, face caught in panicked concern like a deer caught in the oncoming headlights on a road at night. “You remember Redbeard?”

“Of course I remember Redbeard,” Billy growled, sullen and feeling more and more ill by the second. “Our big dog.”

“Big dog?” Mycroft’s voice was still. Too still.

He’d been a big red setter. Billy was sure of it.

Wasn’t he?

“He barked and barked,” he said, then turned away, unable to remember when that had been. When had Redbeard barked and barked and barked, all night, and after that…

“I want to go exploring,” Billy said. “Take me.”

Mycroft sighed heavily. “We’ve been exploring all over the estate. Can we stay here and lie in the hammock in the shade? I’ll read you a book.” He sounded uneasy, too, and he looked out across the rustling grass and the nodding flowers of the meadow with ill-concealed tension.

“I don’t want to read books,” Billy said, restless and afraid and determined to drown all that in action of any sort at all. “Books are boring. Let’s run.” And with that he set off, pell-mell and helter-skelter. Mycroft, leaning on the fence, heaved a sigh.

Billy smirked as he heard his older brother come after him, panting from behind. Mycroft hated running. He hated sunshine. When the sun shone bright off his carrot-orange hair, he burned, and his eyes watered, and he got headaches, and he sweated just like a pink piglet.

“You’re too fat,” Billy called over his shoulder, and ran even faster, and tried not to hear the vast breathing of death coming behind on the East Wind.

**Author's Note:**

> I am in the process of shifting my real life endeavors in ways that are likely to affect my work here. That does not mean I am quitting. It does mean that I'm going to need to spend more time on other projects. If you are interested in my current material, including what I hope will eventually be revision and de-fanficcing of some of the projects I started here, I'm going to offer my Facebook fan page as a link to my other work. I do NOT want to offend by ignoring AO3's rules about commercial promotion, and I think this is the logical way out of that. So--if you are interested in my current projects, wihch I hope to launch in mid-to-late April, follow my Facebook fan page and wait for the announcement of launch.
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/pegfiction/
> 
> You can also find links to my current work here:
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tammanyt
> 
> For those who already know--today is launch day.


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